Whew – what a year. I’ll refrain from my own personal observations of the passing year, and give this space for a few words from Stephen: The events of this past year and especially of this past week have shown us not only how fragile is our existence on this planet, but also how great is the power of our coming together. … There is so much promise in the air, and yet so many of us fall to war and famine, natural disaster and disease. Those few people who have had the good fortune to be in a position to make things better have an obligation, a duty, to extend as much of themselves as they can to do so. The future of our civilization depends not on how high the greatest of us soar but on how far … Continue reading »

Alan Levine has a post on his blog that describes how he is publishing updates on Feed2JS using MovableType. If you haven’t heard about Feed2JS, I suggest you go check it out – it is one of the coolest little tools around. Basically, it is a set of PHP scripts which allow anyone to include an RSS feed on their web page by generating a Javascript code that gets the feed info from the Feed2JS cache and munges it into some HTML that gets written into the web page. There are even some styles to choose from to make it look a little bit dressed up. The best part is that Alan has released the PHP scripts so that you can host the service on your own server instead of using Alan’s server. Now what Alan has done is to … Continue reading »

I’m spending a couple of days off-line for the holidays. If you are celebrating any kind of holiday at this time of year, I hope its a good one. Even if you don’t celebrate, I hope you are having a good time! And now, a picture of my daughter serenading the Xmas tree:

In the iPodder-developer Yahoo group, Julian Bond posted the following method for recording Skype calls using Audacity under Windows. Disclaimer – I haven’t tried this yet (I’m at school, so I’ll have to wait until I get home), but I wanted to post this information since I have noticed a number of bloggers (most recently Will Richardson) mention that they have been looking for a way to do this: Skype Options, Handset, disable Auto sound setting Open Windows mixer, make sure Microphone is included. Unmute the microphone. Set low. Set Wave Out to the same level Open another Windows Mixer for Recording, select Wave out mix. Set low. Install Audacity with the Lame MP3 encoder Set Audacity to 22Khz, 16 bit mono (or 12Khz) Set MP3 encoding to 64K or 32K Start Audacity recording Use Skype to call Echo123 for … Continue reading »

Via Slashdot, I see that The Definitive Guide to Plone is available online. Plone is a really solid, open source content management system, built on top of the Zope content management framework (and as an added bonus, its written in Python!). I’ve noticed a few educational technology blogs, notably that of David Wiley, are run using Plone. The biggest drawback, from my point of view, is that you basically need to run your own server in order to install Plone, as opposed to some of the PHP/Perl + MySQL content management systems, such as Drupal. These can be installed onto any server that runs PHP or Perl scripts. There are some hosts that provide Plone hosting, but at a premium that makes it less attractive.

Wow – I just checked the logs for the site, and I am amazed at the way that podcast #3 is skewing the stats for the site. Since early Sunday morhing when I uploaded the podcast, it has been downloaded 69 times. Consequently, Sunday was my biggest single day of bandwidth usage since the site began. I don’t know about anyone else, but usually when looking at hosting for a site the bandwidth available is so ridiculously above my needs that I don’t have to worry about it. This month, however, with 2 podcasts produced, I am starting to see the limits of my bandwidth. I’m not sure what happens when I reach the limit, but it will be fun to try and find out!! ;^) If you are considering starting a podcast, storage of podcast archives and bandwidth are … Continue reading »

I’m just uploading the latest stigmergicweb podcast, which is mostly a stream of consciousness rample about some ideas for my presentation at the AMTEC conference in Calgary next May. Leave a comment if you will also be at the conference. I also mention Mary Dykes new blog, U of S Library Instruction News (which I have blogged here previously). Although the title suggests it will be limited to the University of Saskatchewan, I know that Mary’s ideas will good reading for many who are interested in the implications of information technology in librarianship. Mary is also one of the contributors listed for the Virtual Learning Communities 101 blog, which also looks quite intriguing. This will be the last podcast before the holidays, although I may sneak one in between Christmas and New Years.

Mary Dykes from the University of Saskatchewan library has just started up a new blog – UofS Library Instruction News. I am glad to hear this – I have been bugging Mary for a little while that she should be blogging. Now I can turn my attention to others who need to be in the blogosphere!

Its nice to see that CBC news now has RSS feed (cbc.ca – RSS Feeds). When I explain to colleagues or anyone why they would want to use an RSS aggregator, this will be my first example.

After reading the revealing playlists shown by Alec “New Edition” Couros and D’Arcy Norman, I thought I’d join in the fun. Here’s what turned up when I spun the wheel! Original Sin by INXS Foxy Lady by Harry Manx – ubercool cover of Jimi’s hit The Sweater Song by Weezer Suite 4 (Sarabande) from J.S. Bach’s Cello Suites, performed by YoYo Ma Senses Working Overtime by XTC Marie by Blondie Tango Shoes by Bif Naked All Hell for a Basement by Big Sugar Thumbelina by The Pretenders Know How to Love You by Colin James And just because I’m proud of it, Long Way to the Top by AC/DC is number 11. Hmm – can you tell I grew up in the 80′s?